crittergarden said:I just hate the way Americans waste food! I was in a Boston Market once when the power went out. I had been waiting for an appointment nearby and so kept waiting there. After awhile I asked if they'd be donating the food anywhere. Manager told me too much risk of lawsuit..... And I got the same answer from a manager of a small supermarket on a day they had to close for flooding. There HAS to be a way!!!!

That is the thing. Lawsuits and the food pantry is liable. In this country the thinking seems to be that it is better to let people starve!

Newyorkrita said:That is the thing. Lawsuits and the food pantry is liable. In this country the thinking seems to be that it is better to let people starve!

Uh huh.

RickCorey said:Robert Heinlein said he had an idea for a short story, but never wrote it:

"The Day They Shot the Lawyers"

Maybe he was afraid of being sued.

It is totally out of control. No common sense used. Like I read a person sued McDonald because they spilled hot coffee on themselves and burned themselves. Well, they could have not burned themselves too badly and everyone knows coffee is hot!

>> No common sense used.

I was just thinking that exact same thing. It's not only the legal system encouraging lawsuits, or "too many lawyers", it's the total lack of anything resembling common sense or a sense of proportion.

I see it at work. Once there are regulations, or even a formal process, "Compliance" takes over and common sense is forbidden. Often, in order to comply with the "process" that was intended to produce uniformly better results, we have to give up things that WOULD have given better results, but are not part of "The Process".

Everyone, uniformly, says "that makes no sense, but we have to do it this way or the work will be rejected".

Newyorkrita said:

It is totally out of control. No common sense used. Like I read a person sued McDonald because they spilled hot coffee on themselves and burned themselves. Well, they could have not burned themselves too badly and everyone knows coffee is hot!

there's more to the McDonald's case than was publicized. McDonald's policy was to serve coffee at a 'holding temperature' of 186 degrees which would produce 3rd degree 'full thickness' burns within 7 seconds of skin contact. The elderly woman who was horribly burned asked to settle for $20K but McDonald's refused the offer and refused to reduce the temp of their coffee to something less lethal....McDonald's ended having to pay punitive damages but later settled out of court....

'common sense' varies a lot...as a social worker I could tell you stories.....

Sorry, the case I was thinking of is a totally different one. Guy was driving and spilled his coffee on himself.

But then there was the one of the person that sued McDonalds because they gained weight and were overweight from eating Big Macs each day. Really? The list goes on.

Newyorkrita said:A cool spring should have been good for peas.

I started seeing blossoms on some of my peas yesterday.

Over here I have sugar snap peas to harvest AND two zukes. I grow the parthenocarpic zukes that don't need pollination. Away on a business trip today, maybe I should call my husband and have him pick the zukes. I heard it's better to harvest often at small sizes to spur the growth of more veggies.

There are private organizations that will accept produce. But there are a lot of places that will give only canned or processed goods to the homeless and low-income. One of the reasons is that they store better. It is much more difficult to meet demand with fresh produce. If the stuff is warehoused, they can dole it out gradually. And companies making donations can have the goods transported to their organization of choice and not just the nearest one or the one that has the most demand for donations.

Some organizations receive government funding, and the government has even more restrictions that are so rigid that more food is thrown away than given to those who need it. Their attitude is that the needy should be grateful for any food they are given. If you are diabetic, have allergies, or have other health issues, you get the same food as everyone else, regardless. If you can't eat something, you just keep your mouth shut and wait for the next meal, or go elsewhere. Even if you have to stand in long lines in the freezing cold just to find out you can't eat the food offered.

There is also the lawyer factor, but it really depends on which organization you are dealing with. Not all private organizations are willing to comply when the result is people going hungry or suffering through health issues trying to eat food that is contraindicated for their medical issues.

SCButtercup said: it's better to harvest often at small sizes to spur the growth of more veggies.

That's what I believe. But I don't grow veggies on a large enough scale to prove it.

This morning the first thing we did is plant all the unsold tomatoes out in the 'field.' There is an area about as large as my garden (135'x100') outside the fenced garden, near the goat pastures. Matt always plants green manures and grains there. They just cut the wheat and crimson clover and tilled it up. He planted cow peas and that's where I planted the sweet potatoes and the long strip of sun flowers. The Bloody Butcher dent corn will also get planted there.

We had 26 leftover tomatoes that won't be staked, just left to sprawl. For being in 4" pots the plants looked pretty good.

I started picking lettuce for market but tasting as I went along and there was just too much that wa bitter so the lettuce is finished. Not much to take to market this week. I should have some beets, carrots, turnips, chard and kale as well as my flowers. Oh, radished too.

Then I planted my Maverick melon and the butter peas seed my friend asked me to plant for her. Got that all watered in and it started to rain but good thing I watered because the rain only lasted long enough to get me soaked. I finished up by doing a little weeding. Hoping we gat a bit more rain the next few days though.

ckatNM said:There are private organizations that will accept produce. But there are a lot of places that will give only canned or processed goods to the homeless and low-income. One of the reasons is that they store better. It is much more difficult to meet demand with fresh produce. If the stuff is warehoused, they can dole it out gradually. And companies making donations can have the goods transported to their organization of choice and not just the nearest one or the one that has the most demand for donations.

Some organizations receive government funding, and the government has even more restrictions that are so rigid that more food is thrown away than given to those who need it. Their attitude is that the needy should be grateful for any food they are given. If you are diabetic, have allergies, or have other health issues, you get the same food as everyone else, regardless. If you can't eat something, you just keep your mouth shut and wait for the next meal, or go elsewhere. Even if you have to stand in long lines in the freezing cold just to find out you can't eat the food offered.

There is also the lawyer factor, but it really depends on which organization you are dealing with. Not all private organizations are willing to comply when the result is people going hungry or suffering through health issues trying to eat food that is contraindicated for their medical issues.

We have a local in town organization. You would think they could take fresh food grown locally. Nope, not allowed. It really is sad.

abhege said:This morning the first thing we did is plant all the unsold tomatoes out in the 'field.' There is an area about as large as my garden (135'x100') outside the fenced garden, near the goat pastures. Matt always plants green manures and grains there. They just cut the wheat and crimson clover and tilled it up. He planted cow peas and that's where I planted the sweet potatoes and the long strip of sun flowers. The Bloody Butcher dent corn will also get planted there.

We had 26 leftover tomatoes that won't be staked, just left to sprawl. For being in 4" pots the plants looked pretty good.

I started picking lettuce for market but tasting as I went along and there was just too much that wa bitter so the lettuce is finished. Not much to take to market this week. I should have some beets, carrots, turnips, chard and kale as well as my flowers. Oh, radished too.

Then I planted my Maverick melon and the butter peas seed my friend asked me to plant for her. Got that all watered in and it started to rain but good thing I watered because the rain only lasted long enough to get me soaked. I finished up by doing a little weeding. Hoping we gat a bit more rain the next few days though.

You did a lot and you are going to have SOOOOO many tomatoes this year! Especially now that those silly birds that pecked them last year are gone.

I have a record number of plants set in myself. More tomatoes than I am going to know what to do with.

And hey, I see my pepper plants with flowers and one already has tiny peppers set. Blooms already on the zucchini but looks like all male blossoms so far. Hoping for a great year in the veggie patch.

Eggplants are blooming also, at least some of them and more and more of the tomato plants get blossoms every day.

busy busy busy!
I am such small potatoes!
But I do it for my sanity, not for anything else!
Oh, a little food, but only snacking amounts.

Hurray, I weeded and got the cucumber area all ready for planting. My seedlings that I grew myself are ready to plant out so I needed to get those weeds gone.

Hopefully tomorrow I will plant them and then mulch with the straw. Easier to mulch right away while the plants are still small.

I have lots of cukes. 6 varieties so I should be swimming in cucumbers this season.

I've finally made the decision to move my veggies up closer to the house. I've been struggling with this thought for some time now, but I think I must. I hadn't wanted to because I've spent 17 years building up good soil out by the barn, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get the well I need out there, so move I shall. I don't mind hauling buckets from the horse tank, but my skin can't take that much sun anymore, and the hauling requires a lot of extra exposure. I'm consoling myself with the plan of growing self-sufficient flowers out there in that great soil...I've already started in fact.
It'll be strange (to me) to have trellises and fences of just veggies in the yard proper...but only at first, I guess. The veggies that are already out there are enough to haul for this year...

Good soil is so precious ... could you bribe someone with vegetables (or cookies (or beer)) to wheelbarrow some of that soil to your current flowerbeds?

Oh, I'm okay there, Rick. Horse + food + stall bedding equals lots of good growing mix.
I could transfer the other soil, but that seems like doubling the workload...I'd just end up building up the old bed again anyway.

chelle said:I've finally made the decision to move my veggies up closer to the house. I've been struggling with this thought for some time now, but I think I must. I hadn't wanted to because I've spent 17 years building up good soil out by the barn, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get the well I need out there, so move I shall. I don't mind hauling buckets from the horse tank, but my skin can't take that much sun anymore, and the hauling requires a lot of extra exposure. I'm consoling myself with the plan of growing self-sufficient flowers out there in that great soil...I've already started in fact.
It'll be strange (to me) to have trellises and fences of just veggies in the yard proper...but only at first, I guess. The veggies that are already out there are enough to haul for this year...

It sounds like a good plan.